Danger Unsafe Area

Part 1: In Which I Fall On My Ass

Wheels on my feet keep on turning.

The other day I went roller skating with my son at a community college campus conveniently empty and spacious from the pandemic lockdown. I hadn’t skated in two years, not since he lost interest in skating after breaking his arm rocketing out of control down the hill on the south side of the state capitol building. He never skated again. With my skate partner out of the game, my skates went into the closet, and I forgot about them. Two years later, I saw a man skating on the hike and bike trail nearby, with speed and grace. I mused aloud, “Oh yeah! I should get my skates out again!” and my son immediately said, “Me too!” So we went this weekend.

When last we’d skated, I wasn’t exactly graceful, but I could getting going pretty fast, and I could turn, and I could even turn around and skate backward at slow speed. What I’ve never figured out quite is how to stop. I thought it would be like the proverbial riding a bike: my body would remember how to do it even if my mind had forgotten. Turns out, though, that my body forgot all about it too.

Which is a long way to go to get to: “I fell on my ass.” I was shaky and tentative at first, then started to remember a little bit, got a little more confident, and then did one of those cartoon scenes where I started to fall, my arms went to pinwheeling, and my feet worked very hard for a very long time before I finally crashed onto the concrete.

I got up slowly, thinking, “Well, that’s it for skating.” I thought maybe I was too old for this. Maybe falling repeatedly onto concrete is an unwise thing to do to my body. I thought I would just take off my skates and watch my son go for awhile. But instead, I kept the wheels on. I sat only for a minute before getting back on my feet. I started slowly. I stayed on the flat bits. Gradually I went farther and faster, and it occurred to me it was good to get back up and try again. I even did a few turns before taking my skates off and walking down the hill to the car.

Part 2: In Which I Climb a Hill

I didn’t see the sign, I swear!

On Monday, still sore from smashing my pelvis and wrists against concrete, I went to Garner State Park with Flora. We saw not a single other person on the trail, so social distancing win, and it was a gorgeous day for hiking, and swimming in the creek, and hiking again. We took our time, enjoying the place and the view and each other. We started along Frio Canyon Trail, but it was flat and shadeless and didn’t knock us out with gorgeous views, so we turned around and gave Blinn River Trail a shot. It was shady, and before long, it opened up to a beautiful swimming hole we couldn’t resist. When we went on again, a cliff wall rose up on our right, and soon I saw a small cave up there. I was drawn to climb up to it and see if I could go in, so up I left the trail and went up the steep, leaf-covered incline. I was careful, watching for snakes and placing my feet intentionally, but soon I was under the cave. I couldn’t quite get to it, and the wall was comprised of a crumbly, sandy stone that I didn’t trust to hold me if I tried to climb up, so I came back down again along another path to discover that there was a sign there advising me not to climb up to where I had just been: “Danger Unsafe Area.” And I was filled with a gratitude that my experience on the skates had not crushed my sense of adventure, my confidence in myself, or my trust that I know what I can do. I am a man who will still strap wheels on his feet, who will still follow that inner voice that asks, “I wonder if I can get up there?”

Part 3: In Which I Climb a Mountain

A welcome sign.

When we finished Blinn River Trail, we almost immediately discovered Crystal Cave Trail. We didn’t plan ahead, except that Flora brought snacks and water, so we had no idea what Crystal Cave might show us or what the trail to reach it would be like, but we plunged in. It immediately became clear that there was a reason the trail was called “Challenging” on the map we picked up at the Visitor’s Center. It was a steep and rocky climb up, and every time we reached the spot that was just out of sight around the curve when we were below, we saw it continued its steep and rocky climb up at least as far as we could see again. We kept going up, and we kept checking in with each other. I was breathing hard. We were both soaked in sweat. Do you want to stop? Just a little further. Let’s see how it goes. We can go as slowly as we want and take as many breaks as we need. And just when I thought maybe this was a terrible idea and was imagining the park rangers having to call in the helicopter to rescue me, we found ourselves looking at the “Crystal Cave” sign. The view from the top was gorgeous, and the view of “Old Baldy” from the other side of the peak was equally satisfying. And again I was struck by the idea that I thought maybe it was too much, that I couldn’t do it. But with love, and patience, and humor, we reached the top, together.

Part 4: A Brief Departure Into the History of My Substance Abuse

Mullets and center parts were cool then, I swear.

I started drinking when I was 14. It was an awkward, shy teen’s entry into a world of cool kids. It was permission to be fun and funny and flamboyant, a disguise that let me act like someone I didn’t really feel like: a cool kid myself. I loved the feeling of participating in the forbidden, of living a secret life, of doing things that other kids at school wouldn’t dream of doing. When I soon added hallucinogens, marijuana, and other drugs to the mix, I discovered also that I adored all of the paraphernalia and ephemera that went with it. Little bottles and jars and carved boxes and little tins in which to keep things; my rolling machine and orange Zig Zag papers; pipes and pipe tools, wooden dugouts and one hitters, flasks and cigarette cases for an evening’s worth of pre-rolled joints. I loved it all. It satisfied the same desire to collect that little pewter D&D figures and all the multi-sided dice used to fill when I was younger. And like with Dungeons & Dragons, I loved that we were always on a quest: a quest to find someone to buy us booze, someone to sell us weed, someone who knew a guy who knew a guy with a sheet of acid. The quest was never ending, a shared goal to work towards.

The sense of community and belonging was real, too. I had friends to hang out with and places to hang out. There was an apartment complex not far from my house, ironically called Camelot. We had friends all over the complex, and we wandered door to door, always looking for someone holding or someone with a line on someone holding, someone throwing a party, or someone who knew someone who was.

Some of these apartment dwellers, I noticed, were old, really old to a 14 to 19 year old like me. They were as old then as I am now, and they bounced between low paying hourly wage jobs, on the same quest for the next high that we were. I remember Richard, who was 40 years old if he was a day, a house painter, the willing pawn of 15-year-old Lana. For a flirty look from her, he would do anything. I often wondered what he would think if he heard how Lana talked about him when he wasn’t around. I thought these people, these grownups who lived sometimes at the periphery and sometimes at the center of my high school circle, had come to a sad place in their lives, but I knew that would never be me.

I continued drinking and drugs into my twenties. I continued drinking into my thirties and forties. Somewhere along the way, the fun, the quest, the collecting, the laughter and the joy, became a secondary part of the experience, and eventually all but disappeared from the experience altogether. I drank not for adventure, but from habit. I numbed myself with it, numbed myself to a life in which not very much happened, not very much changed, and time kept on rolling along. I stayed in a job that did little to challenge me. I stayed in a marriage that did little to elevate me. I felt weak and incapable because I did nothing, and I did nothing because I felt weak and incapable. I had been a writer in high school, published in the school literary magazine, praised by teachers and peers for my potential. I started a novel in college, but I never finished it, and over the years, it was always something I’d get back to, but I never did.

And then, after 20 years of marriage, my wife asked for a divorce, and I woke up.

Part 5: In Which I Extrapolate

Shortly after my skating fall, it occurred to me that it was a metaphor for my marriage. The fall seemed in retrospect to be inevitable, even though it took a very long time. The whole way down, I was working very hard to prevent the crash; a voice in my head kept saying, “I can fix it! I can fix it!” while another part of me knew there was no fixing it. And once it was over, and there was no avoiding the crash any longer, I realized it wasn’t nearly as terrible as I thought it would be.

When I got back on my feet and kept skating, and when I tried and failed to reach the first cave, and when I tried and succeeded in reaching the second cave, I heard that same voice in my head whispering that I couldn’t do that. It would be better at my age to keep my feet out of skates. It would be better at my age to stay on the trail. It would be better at my age to give up and go back rather than keep climbing, lest I fail spectacularly, break bones, get bit by snakes, have a heart attack and die. It’s better, after all, to fail for lack of trying than to fail for lack of ability, isn’t it?

For me substance abuse and isolation were ways of listening to that voice and quieting the other voice, the voice that’s whispering that I can do more, that I want to do more, that I should do more. I thought that drinking and wasting time went together, a package deal. I binged years worth of TV series in days because it went so well with sitting still and pouring alcohol down my throat. But I’ve found in the 5 years since I stopped drinking that I still use other things the same way that I used alcohol. I still spend evenings and weekends watching movies and series on Netflix and Amazon and Hulu rather than learning how to play piano. I still spend hours and days and weeks and months and years accomplishing great things in imaginary XBox worlds rather than editing the podcast episode that’s waiting to be finished.

There is value in unplugging, and relaxing. There is joy in spending time on a couch diving into engaging entertainment with someone I love. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and XBox are not inherently destructive or addictive. But for me, I have to pay attention to how I use them, and I find that just like with alcohol, if I’m using them all by myself for long stretches of time, I am using them to give myself permission not to do something else that I’m avoiding. And often I’m avoiding it out of fear of failure.

So is it better to fail from lack of trying than from lack of genius? No, it’s not. It’s better to write, even if it never gets published. It’s better to create a podcast, even if Ira Glass never calls. It’s better to write poetry and make sculpture and draw portraits and make songs that are nothing like what you thought they’d be when you started. Learning and growing come from doing and moving. And learning and growing have provided the greatest highs of my life.